


Lessons in Adjustment

by biggod



Series: Lessons In Adjustment [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Chronic Illness, Disability, Established Relationship, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Married Couple, Medical Conditions, Mentions of surgery, Metaphors Fucking Everywhere, Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26297569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggod/pseuds/biggod
Summary: “Render Dreamatorium,” he says, clear and loud. “Future.”A study of illness: how it feels, how we cope, and how we save the people we love.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: Lessons In Adjustment [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967347
Comments: 21
Kudos: 168





	Lessons in Adjustment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onemechanicalalligator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemechanicalalligator/gifts), [adorations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adorations/gifts), [sleepy_santiago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepy_santiago/gifts).



> read the tags, please. be safe.
> 
> this fic is very close to my heart. if it helps one person feel seen and understood, that's enough.
> 
> unfathomable thanks to midge, maya and grace. i love you all so so much.

Abed hates medical dramas.

Structurally, they depend highly on emotional nuance, simplistic plotlines and cliche. Even the ones that try to be interesting inevitably fall prey to angsty interpersonal conflict.

Personally, Abed also hates hospitals, and most doctors - though Rich from Pottery class was nice, if too old for Annie. This only lessens the appeal of medical shows. The exception is _MASH_ , which is so far removed from the drama-centric stories of the twenty-first century that it gets a pass. Abed also hates improperly utilized tropes, with which _Grey’s Anatomy_ and the like are overflowing.

If Abed could have written his own plotline, it wouldn’t have gone like this.

**one.**

Abed doesn’t like changes that he doesn’t understand. His two main coping mechanisms are shutdowns and denial.

He chooses the latter for months. Every symptom is because of his long filming hours, his creative frustrations, a bug going around at the studio. Troy notices, but believes him. Friends don’t lie, so surely husbands don’t.

The first time Abed blacks out, he’s luckily sitting down in his office, alone. He tells himself he just fell asleep from exhaustion, ignoring the shattered mug on the floor and the blood dripping from his nose.

The second time, he is unlucky. He is standing in the kitchen with Troy until suddenly he isn’t - he’s floating in the dark, and he can’t feel his body but he knows that it hurts, and he kind of feels like he's in a sensory deprivation tank, or that one hypnosis scene in _Inspector Spacetime_ , except Troy’s voice is starting to break through, and Troy isn't a blorgon, he would never hurt him--

“Abed!”

Abed’s eyes snap open, but the image of Troy is a bit blurry. They’re on the floor. Troy is holding him, one hand cradling his head, the other supporting his back, and he looks so concerned that Abed’s heart breaks a little.

“I’m okay,” Abed says automatically, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. It doesn’t seem to soothe Troy like he hoped it would.

“What happened?”

Abed opens his mouth, but can’t quite speak. He still feels dazed, and his head is beginning to hurt, little pinpricks of color dancing across his vision. He feels like he’s been yanked out of time, shaken about and then dropped unceremoniously back in.

Troy seems to realize Abed is not going to be able to answer.

“You’re bleeding,” Troy says, quietly. His voice is scratchy. “And you’re crying.”

Abed touches his cheek, then his upper lip; Troy is right about both. Abed’s hand is shaking.

“Can you get up?”

Abed considers this for a moment. He shakes his head no, and then immediately winces at the movement. He thinks he makes a sound, but it’s hard to tell through the pain throbbing in the back of his skull.

“Okay,” Troy says, and shifts his hands to rest beneath Abed’s knees and shoulders. He lifts him gently, which Abed doesn’t expect; he definitely makes a noise this time, and it must sound scared because Troy makes that humming sort of _shh_ noise that he does when Abed is upset.

Troy is blinking a lot, Abed notices. He knows this means something, but can’t connect the dots.

Troy deposits him ever-so-gently onto the couch, tipping Abed’s head to the side to look at the back of it. He hums disapprovingly and grabs a pillow, situating it as carefully as possible beneath Abed’s head.

“I’m going to get you some ice,” he says softly, and turns to leave. Abed grabs his hand.

Troy looks at him, and his eyes are shining, and oh, those are tears. _That’s what the blinking means._ Troy squeezes his hand and walks away.

Abed hates feeling helpless. He wants his head to stop hurting, and he wants to have been able to walk in here himself, and he wants to stop wondering why nothing looks familiar when he knows he’s in his living room. He wants Troy to stop being sad.

He hears Troy getting an ice pack from the freezer, hears the squeak of the drawer as he grabs a dish towel to wrap it up in. Then there’s silence, and Abed doesn’t know how long it stretches for but it feels like a long time before Troy’s footsteps sound down the hall, louder and louder as he returns.

(Later on, when his head is clearer, Abed will realize that according to the tropes, Troy must have been bracing himself somehow, whether by leaning against the counter and taking deep breaths, or rubbing a hand over his face, or some equally simple but impactful body language to convey his shock or stress for audiences.)

Troy settles onto the floor next to the couch. He takes Abed’s chin gently and turns his face towards Troy’s, propping the ice pack on the pillow against the back of Abed’s head. He grabs a tissue off the coffee table behind him and offers it to Abed, who takes it and cleans his nosebleed.

“How do you feel?” Troy asks, keeping his tone even and low like he does during sensory overload. Abed appreciates it.

“Disoriented,” is what he settles on in reply.

“Do you know what happened?”

“No.” Abed wants to shake his head but resists.

“We were talking, and you just… dropped. Mid-sentence.”

“I’ve been really tired, I probably need to take a break from work--”

“I don’t know,” Troy says, and swallows. “You were, like… shaking. And you wouldn’t wake up for almost two minutes.”

Oh, Abed _hates_ this.

“I’m calling the doctor first thing in the morning,” Troy says, putting up a hand when Abed starts to protest. “Even if it’s nothing, you could still have a concussion.”

Troy looks at Abed pointedly. Abed knows what he's doing: Troy's using the concussion, the fact that Abed's brain might have been altered, to convince him to see a doctor. Unfortunately, Troy is right.

“Fine,” Abed says eventually. Troy nods, but doesn’t seem happy. Abed is too tired to figure out what that means.

\---

They’re sitting in an office with several undoubtedly impressive and expensively framed diplomas hanging on the wall, and Abed doesn’t want to be here. He’s playing with the Rubik’s Cube from the doctor’s desk and thinking about the scripts he has to read by next Tuesday, tempted to tune out most of what the doctor says. Troy is tense in the chair beside him.

The doctor comes in. He apologizes for their wait. He’s in his fifties and he’s probably taken a seminar on sensitivity, because he’s speaking in a calming voice and making lots of eye contact with Troy.

The doctor is going on about the types of tests they ran, and Abed is paying the minimal amount of attention, because he still remembers exactly what they were called and what they felt like. He’s only here for Troy’s sake anyway. Maybe this is why he’s caught off guard.

He hears the words _kidney failure_ and _stage three_ , and his hands still on the Rubik’s Cube for a moment. Then he hears _surgery_ and _high risk_ and forcibly tunes out again. He’s solved the puzzle. He twists it up and starts all over.

\---

When they return to the car, Troy looks so shaky that Abed offers to drive. Troy simply shakes his head and sits in the driver’s seat.

When he turns the key, the radio jumps on louder than they expect.

_-my, how could I resist ya? Mamma mia, does it show ag--_

Troy turns off the radio with a rapid _click_. He clutches the wheel and stares at the dashboard.

“Well,” he says, “This feels familiar.”

\---

Lupus nephritis, largely asymptomatic in the early stages, causing chronic renal failure. Recurrent situational syncope. Early stages Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Abed runs back through the last couple of years in his mind, replacing each instance of headaches, body and joint pains, exhaustion, even the recent blackouts, with these terms. He doesn’t like operating on misinformation. He dislikes the way he’s lied to himself, and by extension Troy, even more.

\---

The drive home from the hospital is silent. When they get home, it’s barely 4pm; they head immediately for the bedroom and lie down side by side on top of the bedspread.

Troy fidgets with his hands. Abed folds his fingers together on top of his stomach and stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

“You know,” Abed starts, and pauses when he hears how rough his own voice is. He hadn’t expected that. He didn’t realize he was about to cry, but then everything seems like an illusion anyway, fragile and unfocused and not quite real. He feels like he’s trapped inside a mirror on moving day, and a careless workman could drop him on the stairs and shatter his universe at any moment, leaving nothing of his life but an empty frame without him in it.

Troy is looking at him now, eyes wide and red, so Abed presses on. He doesn’t know why he does.

“I always knew that this would end with someone leaving,” Abed says quietly. Troy doesn’t sound like he’s breathing. “I never thought it would be me.”

Abed risks a glance at Troy. He’s crying silently, which Abed has never seen before; Troy is loud and expressive with how deeply he feels, and Abed loves that about him. Troy has never looked so devastated, so raw, in all the time they’ve known each other. He reaches out and grasps Abed’s hands, and Abed shifts his grip to tangle their fingers together and swallows.

“I was never going to leave you,” Troy chokes out, “And I’m not going to now.”

Abed squeezes his hand and doesn’t reply.

\---

The way this played out should give him more faith in television, he thinks. To finally understand what _House M.D._ actually got right should make him like medical shows more, the way he didn’t relate to lost-lover films until Troy sailed away from landlocked Colorado.

Instead, he hates them all the more. Even _MASH_ , now.

\---

They call Annie first. It seems cruel, calling her out of the blue - _hey, we love you, we miss you, we just talked to you over the weekend and everything was fine but now Abed is life-alteringly ill and needs an organ transplant he might not survive, how are you_ \- but they do it anyway, because it’s what has to be done. She cries, of course, and has a flight booked by the time they’re off the phone.

Troy is crying by the end of the phone call, too. Abed kisses his knuckle and gently suggests that Troy go start on dinner, and Abed will join him shortly when he’s called the others. Troy needs to be busy when he’s upset, needs somewhere to put his hands; he nods and stands, presses a firm kiss to Abed’s forehead, and leaves the room, closing the door behind himself.

Britta is loud and overly apologetic, but he doesn’t blame her. Jeff does that voice that means he mainly wants to comfort Abed to keep himself stable, to feel like he can do something, and Abed lets him. Shirley gets sniffly but she listens, encourages him, and asks for updates, which he finds himself appreciating the most.

Abed saves his father for last. Gubi cries, but tells him he’s a strong boy, and he’ll be fine. Abed can’t tell if he believes that or not.

**two.**

Eventually, Abed is going to need a kidney transplant.

In the meantime, there’s dialysis, which he loathes. A doctor filling in for his regular practitioner suggests one day that they could speed the donor process along with their _resources_ , i.e. money, and maybe it’s because Abed is so fucking tired and on edge from the hospitals and the needles and the pity but he yells at that man until his voice breaks, and then Troy picks up where he left off, and Abed loves him _so fucking much_.

Abed doesn’t want to take a kidney from someone who needs it more, who has less money or less time. Abed also does not want a kidney transplant at all.

He doesn’t want the organs keeping him alive to come from someone else, doesn’t want the intrusion of foreign DNA inside him. The idea of someone removing a part of him they’ve decided is broken and replacing it with a better model from someone else makes him want to wrap his arms around his body and not let them in. The problem is that this time, they’re right, and he _is_ broken, and his will to force himself into dialysis sessions wanes every time he hears the hum of the fluorescents.

It’s the thought of Troy that keeps him going, twelve hours across three days every week, and the thought of Troy that makes him willing - though still unhappy - to go through with the surgery.

Abed can’t seem to get grounded for a while. He feels disconnected from his body while trapped inside it, like it’s a cage, or a high school locker. He feels betrayed that it was a part of himself that sealed him in this time.

He hates how many people seem to feel ownership of his body, too, from the nurses that don’t ask before they touch him to the administrators that expect his consent on forms they won’t explain.

The good days and bad days don’t seem to follow any kind of pattern, despite Abed’s best efforts to track them. One day he feels like he always has, if maybe a little tired, and the next he can’t do much but lie in bed and try not to move. Troy sits in bed with him on those days, pulls up Inspector Spacetime on his laptop and holds Abed in his lap, runs his hands through Abed’s hair. He thinks he’s subtle when his palm occasionally strays down to Abed’s forehead to check for fevers.

Some days are couch days, which are somewhere in the middle. On these days Abed rides the line of feeling like a stranger in his body and wondering why he has one at all.

Troy isn’t doing too badly dealing with it, all things considered. The near-constant crying phase wore off after a couple of days, and after that Troy turned determined. He’s optimistic now, in the daytime, to a level Abed can’t quite comprehend but stays in awe of. It’s wearing on him, though, Abed can tell in the little moments - particularly how the stress and the upheaval have affected Troy’s sleep.

“Stay,” Abed asks him groggily one morning, when Troy gets up far too early to have rested enough. Abed tugs at Troy’s arm to coax him back to bed.

“Go back to sleep,” Troy says softly, brushing his lips across Abed’s cheek.

“Long-term sleep deprivation heightens your risk of… diabetes, or something,” Abed mumbles sideways into his pillow.

Troy leans away then, steps towards their bedroom door.

“Let’s not think about what might or might not happen,” Troy murmurs. “Get some rest.” 

Abed rolls onto his back after Troy leaves, wincing at the movement, before scanning over Troy’s favorite constellation on the ceiling. They hung these stars the day they moved into their house, before they owned a bed frame or unpacked the kitchen. They couldn’t find Troy’s old navigational maps in the move-in mess, so they made their own night sky, created new mythology and all. Troy had hung one cluster of five and said, _I could never pick out the north star, but there were some stars that looked like this over the Pacific, and I followed them back to land after the pirates set us adrift._

Troy seems afraid to look beyond the present. Abed can’t accept that, and decides it’s time for change.

\---

The Dreamatorium has been collecting a fine layer of dust since diagnosis. It’s not that Troy walks on eggshells around Abed, because both of them would hate that; but he’s a little overprotective, and he frets, and that includes worrying - rightfully so - about Abed’s energy, so he sets up lots of movie nights and keeps the Dreamatorium door closed.

Abed’s had enough, though, so he waits for a relatively good pain day to take Troy by the hand and lead him to the doorway. Troy starts to protest, as per usual, but Abed steps closer, presses a finger to his lips.

“Trust me, please,” Abed says. Troy blinks a couple of times, then slowly nods.

Troy is a little tense when they enter, glancing almost warily around at the gridded walls. Abed feels something similar - it’s just now occurring to him how very long it’s been. After months of this stress wearing down on them both, the Dreamatorium feels a bit like a natural history museum, or a mausoleum.

Abed shakes off the thought. They’re here to change that.

“Render Dreamatorium,” he says, clear and loud. “Future.”

Troy shoots him a surprised glance. Abed is never so vague with his rendered dreamscapes.

The green of the walls melts away, the yellow stripes turning a shade paler and spreading to each corner of the room. Troy makes a full, slow turn, and Abed wishes he had a tracking shot to capture Troy’s wonder as the room begins to fill: bunk beds against one wall, a cartoon mural on another, a toy chest, a crib with a Star Wars mobile, a chair in the corner with tiny shoes on the seat.

Troy completes his turn and faces Abed, eyes shining and wide.

“What…” His voice is faint, and he trails off and swallows.

“I don’t want our lives to be what they’ve been.” Abed nods towards the door. “We’re in a development arc, not a genre switch. We’ve still got plans, and hopes.”

Troy’s tears are flowing freely now.

“So, this is a reminder,” Abed continues, gesturing at the room around them, and smiles. “Just because the future is terrifying doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

Troy grabs Abed and pulls him gently into a hug, but grips him so hard once he’s there that Abed’s sure his arms must hurt. Abed wraps his arms around Troy and returns the favor.

“How did you know?”

“Do you think you have a monopoly on worrying about your husband?” Abed asks drily.

Troy pulls back a bit, cradles Abed’s cheek in his palm.

“I thought you’d given up,” Troy says after a moment.

“Just a little lost at sea,” Abed replies.

Troy leans up and kisses him, sweet and tender. It doesn’t stay that way.

\---

All systems of the human body are intricately connected. One illness causes three more. No one tells you this when you get your disabled card, but now Abed is dealing with symptoms that are syndromes in their own right, like fibromyalgia. Some days he feels his muscles pull achingly across his bones; his skeleton creaks, or his nerves light all skin contact up into a burning, razor-sharp pain that makes a brush of the shoulder feel like a suckerpunch. Even the air hurts on those days. Sometimes it's all three, and he'll submit to the terror of sleeping pills just so he doesn't have to feel it all.

His least favorite symptom is brain fog. It feels more isolating than the actual seclusion. Abed has spent his whole life trying to connect with people, and now finds himself unable to communicate with them. His brain feels like it’s in a constant state of buffering for a video that’s already loaded, and some days the words he thinks and the words that come out of his mouth are entirely separate from each other, getting jumbled up somewhere on the way out. He isn’t stupid, and he _knows_ he isn’t stupid, and the frustration of not being understood anyway is a familiarly bitter companion.

Possibly the oddest of all are the dislocations. Abed discovered at a young age that he was hypermobile in his elbows and shoulders, but combined with the inflammation and pain levels he’s at these days, most of his joints are fair game. If he sleeps the whole night on one side, there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll wake up to find both his shoulder and hip on that side displaced.

Abed does understand this genre better, if nothing else. It’s not that illness waits for the happiest or most romantic moments to strike and remind you suddenly of the horrors you’re living through. It’s that when you’re sick for every moment of your life, that sickness will also be present for your happiest and most romantic moments, and you’ve got to find a way to still be happy and romantic when all your body wants you to be is broken and exhausted and sad.

\---

Troy rides him on the Dreamatorium floor. It’s passionate, emotional. Abed’s hip slips out of place towards the end, and he doesn’t tell Troy until the after, when Troy rolls off and curls into his side.

“What do you mean, dislocated?”

“I mean no longer in the socket,” Abed explains, then pauses. “Oh, you meant that rhetorically.”

“Why didn’t you stop?” Troy seems distressed, and that won’t do, so Abed makes eye contact and keeps his voice even.

“I didn’t want to.”

It seems to help. Troy relaxes marginally.

“Are you in pain?” 

_Don’t lie to him._

“A little,” Abed says, and still feels bad about the vast understatement that it is.

Troy hesitates; Abed knows what’s coming, knows Troy doesn’t want to make him feel helpless.

“Do you… want me to move you? Or get you anything?”

Abed pulls him close and kisses his hairline.

“Let’s just stay here for a bit,” he says, and breathes through the pain.

\---

Annie is hiding something from him. Abed knows this, but doesn’t say anything; she’s terrible at secrets in the long-term, and she never wants to keep them anyway. Abed is too tired to try to figure it out before she’s ready, and he knows that worries her.

She’s whispering to Troy in the hallway when he finally rolls out of bed at 2pm on a Thursday, and he pauses at the door when he hears them on the other side.

“How could you keep this a secret, Annie?” Troy hisses, and Abed knows Troy is probably gesturing wildly.

“I didn’t know how to tell you, and I- I wanted it to be a happy surprise!” She’s stress-crying a little, her voice high. “I didn’t know she would take it upon herself to show up--”

“Abed is _scared_ of this, Annie. It’s a big deal to him, and that’s something we _respect_. Okay? This is a situation you handle delicately, not a _party_ you throw--”

“I know, I’m _sorry_ \--”

They’re obviously not going to drop any more context clues, so Abed twists the door handle and steps into the hallway. Annie’s eyes grow comically huge, and she presses her lips together with a small squeak.

Troy looks at her pointedly, obviously expecting her to speak, and sighs when she continues to fidget in silence. Abed simply looks at Troy and waits.

“Did you sleep okay?” is Troy’s first question, which tells Abed that he looks like shit. He knows he’s a bit gaunter in the face, his hair messier and longer than usual, with dark circles a permanent fixture beneath his eyes. Abed nods the affirmative anyway.

“Good.” Troy is soft and serious. “There’s company in the living room.”

Annie gasps in betrayal, and Troy rolls his eyes. Abed brushes past them both, touching Troy’s shoulder on the way, and hears them bicker quietly behind him with _what are you doing, not yet_ and _you ran out of time Annie what exactly was your plan--_

Shirley is nestled into Troy’s recliner in the living room, novel in hand. She looks up as he shuffles in, favoring his left side, and smiles broadly at him with a lilting, “Hellooo! _”_

It’s a surprise to see her, but it’s a pleasant one. She finds her bookmark and stands to hug him, and she doesn’t do it gingerly like everyone else seems to, so it's hearty and a bit painful and he loves it. Shirley was one of the first to learn that he isn’t as breakable as he seems, and he appreciates that about her. She pats the chair next to hers and settles back in.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, light but sincere. She’s holding his hand on the armrest between them, and he covers their hands with his free palm.

"Alright today," he says, clearing his throat when he hears how scratchy his voice is. "It's really good to see you."

Shirley's face turns sympathetic, which is different from pity, so Abed can stomach it.

"You look tired, baby," she says honestly. "Are you eating?"

He nods. She squeezes his hand.

"Why are you here?" he asks, continuing hastily, "You know I'm happy to see you, but Annie's been lying all week, and she's not good at it. And now you're here."

Shirley shifts slightly to turn more of her body to him, and this is how he knows she's about to be up front with him.

"I'm a donor match for you, Abed." She meets his eyes. "I'm here to convince you to accept."

People spend years on dialysis waiting for a donor. The longer a patient is treated with dialysis, Troy had read, the higher the fatality risk during or after surgery. Finding a match within a year is a rare blessing.

"Oh," Abed says.

"Troy didn't know until I showed up. Apparently Annie tried to tell you both and kept chickening out, so I came to do it my damn self."

Abed has to smile at that.

"Troy tells me you aren't keen on a transplant," she continues, looking down at their hands, "He says the thought of it makes your skin crawl."

Abed nods. Shirley rubs over his knuckles soothingly with her thumb.

"I think I can understand that feeling. The only advice I have for you," and here she looks at him again, meets his eyes and cocks her brow, "Is to get over it."

He wants to laugh, but his throat feels oddly tight.

"There's too many people who love you for you to get stuck in your head about this, Abed."

He's the one to look away this time. He nods again, knowing she's right, hesitant still.

"Your boys--"

"--Are adults, except Ben, and all of them are grown enough to understand. I'm perfectly healthy and I know what I'm doing. Besides."

She waits, withholding her point until Abed looks at her again.

"You and Troy are my boys too," she says intently.

Abed tightens his fingers around hers and takes a few moments to breathe. She lets him.

"I think I can live with it," he says finally, giving her a small smile. "If it's you."

"Oh, honey," she says, back to her musical voice, and beckons him in for a hug.

Shirley stays for a few days. They schedule the surgery for the next month, she sits with him in dialysis, and she bakes _so_ much. 

\---

There’s always a point in the episode formula when things are going too well for the amount of screen time that’s left. Abed feels a creeping dread for two days before the climax.

\---

“So then,” Annie giggles, “Then she took me to the Smithsonian, and we went to the Air and Space Museum, and I’d already been, of course, but I told her I hadn’t because I wanted her to show me her favorite exhibits unbiased.”

“Were they the good ones?” Abed asks.

They’re cuddled together against the headboard in his bedroom, her head on his shoulder, arms around his waist, _Cougar Town_ paused on the laptop. He’s warm, and she’s telling him about the best date she’s ever been on, and Troy is finishing up in the shower.

“All the best ones,” Annie sighs. “I miss her.”

“You should call her,” Abed suggests, and Annie hums.

“Maybe.”

Annie stretches forward to press play.

Out of nowhere, blinding pain shoots through Abed’s skull, from the crown of his head to his eyes, the back of his neck. Abed raises his hand suddenly, and Annie stops, looks at him. He squeezes his eyes shut. He feels his shoulders going rigid and there’s a quiet whine beginning to sound in his throat.

Abed hears Annie close the laptop quietly, then move off the bed. He thinks she’s turning off the overhead light, pulling the curtain closed, and he doesn’t know how to communicate to her that this isn’t one of his headaches, that it’s something he doesn’t recognize; his throat, his whole head, feels impossibly heavy. The bed shifts and Annie is beside him again.

“Do you want me to get your meds--”

Her hand comes up to brush his hair from his forehead, and she cuts herself off with a small gasp. His spine is beginning to feel like a loaded spring, all of him tense and aching, and he can hardly hear her anymore over the buzzing in his ears.

“Abed, you’re burning up,” is the last thing he’s aware of before he slips out of consciousness.

He’ll remember a few moments after the drugs wear off - Annie screaming Troy’s name, his head bumping lightly into Troy’s shoulder as he’s carried quickly to the car, flashes of Annie’s terrified face leaning over him in the backseat as headlights cast deep shadows on her face; some will come later, in dreams or in flashbacks, like Annie’s frantic _Troy, I don’t think he’s breathing_ and Troy’s shaky _Abed, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m really scared and I need you to stay, okay? Please._

The first time he wakes, it’s in a full panic, and all he wants is to get away from the nurses and the lights overhead and the needle in his arm. He screams and thrashes until he’s being held down while someone injects something clear into his IV line. As he sinks back into the dark, he sees Troy in the corner, devastated.

It’s the second waking when he starts to remember snippets, and he opens his eyes and blinks until his vision clears. Troy sits in a chair to his right, and he’s not crying: he looks exhausted, hollow. That scares Abed more than anything. He’s looking at Abed for any sign that he might panic again, and relaxes marginally when it seems Abed will remain calm.

“Hey,” Troy says, his voice rough.

“What happened?” Abed’s own voice reflects how raw and dry his throat feels. He swallows. It doesn’t help.

“You had a seizure. A really bad one. And it triggered some other stuff, I- I’m kinda confused still, to be honest. It wasn’t good though.” Troy rubs the bridge of his nose, wincing. “Annie could probably tell you. They want to move your surgery up.”

“How soon?”

“Two days.”

Abed’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth to speak, but Troy holds a finger up sharply, and Abed stops. Troy reaches out and takes Abed’s hand, and his touch isn’t exactly soft - Troy is trembling, Abed realizes, and feels the weight of guilt settle in the pit of his stomach.

“Before you say anything, I’m gonna have to do something I don’t want to do, have never done before, and never intend to do again. And I understand if it breaks your trust in me, but it’s a risk I have to take.”

Troy’s voice is unsteady, and Abed can tell the angry tone is only a mask, but it gets his attention nonetheless. Abed squeezes Troy’s hand.

“I know you don’t want the surgery, and I know you don’t want to move it any closer, and I won’t force you to do anything.” Troy takes a deep breath. “But I’m asking you to take the part of you that’s resisting this, and put it away. I know it’s a part of who you are, and you know I love every part of you, but right now it’s keeping you from getting help. It’s unfair, but you have to choose between your mental and physical health right now.”

Troy’s breaths are ragged now, and he’s holding Abed’s hand so tight that Abed’s afraid his fingers will dislocate, and Abed lets him.

“I thought you were dying in front of me,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. Abed is nauseated. “And I don’t know how many more times I can get through that. I’d rather have you hate me and be alive.”

“I don’t hate you,” Abed says quietly. “You’re right.”

Guilt flashes across Troy’s face, and he looks like he wants to speak.

“I’ll do it,” Abed says quickly. They can’t both be breaking down at the same time.

Troy stares at him for a moment, then nods, releasing Abed’s hand. Abed masks his wince.

“I’ll ask the nurse for the paperwork,” Troy says, and stands, leaning over to kiss Abed on the cheek.

“You should get some rest,” Abed says.

“I’m not leaving you alone in here.”

Abed spots the guilt in Troy’s eyes again, feels his own curling hot and heavy in his gut, and laughs bitterly. It might feel out of character if Abed had any sense of normalcy left.

“We’re going to be a little fucked up after this, aren’t we?”

Troy smiles a little sadly and brushes his knuckle across Abed’s cheek before he leaves to find the nurse.

**three.**

They release Shirley under careful instructions after three days of recovery. They hold Abed for a full seven.

The study group is waiting excitedly outside the hospital doors the day of his release when Troy bursts out of the door, panting.

“We might… have a situation... “ he gasps, pointing back where he came. “Just. Come see.”

In Abed’s empty hospital bed lie an array of water guns, each labeled for a study group member, and a blueprint of the hospital. Shirley doesn’t have a gun, but there’s a note clipped to a five dollar bill that says _‘go get some herbal tea, you deserve it’._

“Oh, that’s nice!”

“He enlisted the other dialysis patients,” Troy says, still short of breath. “There was an ambush. I don’t even know when he organized this.”

“Are we gonna encourage this?” Britta asks hesitantly. “I get what he’s going for, but he’s in recovery.”

“Think about how tired he’s been,” Annie reasons. “If he went to this much effort, it’s probably important to him.”

“At least it isn’t paintball,” Jeff sighs.

\---

They fight through the recovery wing (where the nurses hate them but the patients cheer), into the stairwell (where Britta falls to an ambush), and find Abed on the roof. He’s alone, barricaded behind an air conditioning duct, and he apparently has quite the water stash, because they lose Annie immediately. Shirley catches up, paper teacup in hand, purse on her shoulder, and giggles while she watches.

Troy tries to move towards Abed, but leaps back from defensive fire. He trades a look with Jeff.

“I don’t think we’re getting through by force,” Jeff says. 

“Mmm, what are you gonna do then?” Shirley hums into her cup.

“I guess one of us surrenders?” Troy suggests, at a loss.

“But who’s it gonna be?” Shirley’s eyes dart between Jeff and Troy.

“Well, I-- would you stop that?” Jeff frowns at her. “Is this like an afternoon soap opera for you?”

“ _Hee hee_ ,” she says, in her Shirley way.

“Not Troy.” Abed’s voice rings out across the roof. Jeff turns back to Troy, takes in the concern and confusion written all over his face, and sighs.

“I’ve got this,” he says, and pulls off his shirt. He doesn’t miss the grateful smile Troy flashes him.

Jeff takes a deep breath and steps out from his cover, his white t-shirt held overhead in surrender.

“I come in peace,” he calls across the roof, taking a tentative step forward. “May I approach?”

“Really mixing your dialogue conventions there, Jeff,” comes the dry, muffled call. Shirley cackles faintly in the background.

“I was a lawyer, sue me for using the language I know.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then:

“Come unarmed and alone.”

Jeff holds his hands high and visible and walks slowly towards Abed, crouched awkwardly behind the duct. Jeff kneels next to him.

“What’s up, buddy?” he says, apparently a little too sweetly, because Abed shoots him a dark look.

“Cut the shit, Jeff, I let you over here because you’re a realist.”

Jeff huffs, dropping his hands abruptly.

“A realist?”

“Sometimes too much for your own good.” Abed uncaps a water bottle from the stash at his feet, using the moment of quiet to top off his gun. “But, if anyone knows how to bounce back from a crisis, it’s you.”

“Abed, what are we doing here? Why won’t you talk to Troy?”

Abed stills, maybe for the first time in this whole conversation.

“He loves me too much,” he says finally. “He has motives. He wants to make me feel better. He might not mean to, but he’ll say what he thinks will help the most, not necessarily what’s the most true. You’ll be honest with me. You’ll tell me if I’m broken.”

Abed takes the last sip from the water bottle for himself, offering Jeff a fresh one. Jeff takes it; it’s hot as hell on this LA roof, even in just an undershirt.

“Besides,” Abed adds, placing his empty bottle on the ground with excessive care, “I’ve put him through enough. This has kind of been a dark storyline for us.”

“He wants to help you.” Jeff feels very out of his league for a moment.

“I know. But tell me he didn’t look a little relieved to have a break when you came out here.”

“Abed…” Jeff pauses, fishing for the words. “He was happy to have _help_. It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it, but I guess it was just you and him for a long time.”

Jeff sighs, wincing at his next words before they come out of his mouth.

“And never tell her I said this, but… Britta’s right, it’s healthy to have more than one person to go to with your problems.”

“Hmm. That’s true.” Abed nods. “And I’m definitely going to tell her you said that. It’s not really about Troy, though.”

“Okay.” Jeff can feel Abed building to something, so he waits.

“I don’t know how to be anyone other than myself. And I’m not only myself now, because there are parts of me that aren’t mine.”

“Abed,” Jeff says, “Is this about Shirley?”

Abed shakes his head.

“It’s not just the transplant, Jeff. It’s all of it. I was me until one day I suddenly wasn’t. My body attacked itself, and I haven’t figured out the metaphor there yet, but I know it doesn’t feel like mine anymore. I’m both a divorced parent and child, and I only have part-time custody of myself.”

Abed shifts from squatting to sitting, knees pulled up to his chest, and all of a sudden he looks so much more like the kid Jeff met nearly fifteen years ago.

“I don’t know where I fit in my own life anymore. It’s like someone made me go on a trip I didn’t want to take, shifted everything in my house over six inches and then dropped me back into it in a blindfold. Everything is different because I’m different, and I can’t even track how I got here because half of it’s a blur, which means I don’t have control of my own brain. And the only part I did have control over was the part I had to give up to be here, and now I don’t know how to be without it. The me that woke up a week ago has only existed in this hospital, and he doesn’t know how to be the me from a week before that, or the me from last year.”

Jeff waits to be sure Abed is done before he speaks.

“Maybe there is no metaphor, Abed. Sometimes we have to make choices that are totally opposite from anything we could have seen ourselves doing, but it doesn’t mean we’ve lost ourselves forever. It’s… it’s character development, not a retcon. And feeling lost after everything that’s happened to you isn’t a sign that you’re irrevocably broken, it means -- well, for one thing, that you haven’t even checked out of the hospital yet and you’re still highly medicated -- and it’s going to take you a while to process. Things will get easier, but you have to get out of your head and give them a chance to be. I understand being afraid to go back to your life, but the frame of the house is still there, even if you’ve got to… rearrange the furniture a bit.”

Abed considers this.

“You’re not quite using ‘retconned’ right, but I get what you were going for.”

Jeff wants to groan, but there’s a twitch at the corner of Abed’s mouth and a light in his eye that gives Jeff hope, so he smiles instead.

“Sue me.”

\---

Abed’s phone buzzes at 8am on a Saturday, and he opens his eyes and snatches it off the nightstand as quickly as possible to keep from waking Troy. He’s sleeping more now, and Abed is very happy to see it. He slides out of bed, gritting his teeth for a moment as his tight muscles cramp at the sudden movement, and steps out into the hallway to answer the phone.

When he returns, Troy is stirring. Abed frowns and slips back into bed, pressing close to Troy’s back and snaking an arm around him.

“Who was that?” Troy asks groggily.

“Dr. Andrews,” Abed replies, hushed. “Go back to sleep.”

Troy does the opposite, turning to his other side to face Abed, blinking himself awake.

“What did he say? Was it about your checkup?”

Abed nods.

“The blood test and the biopsy came back with good results. He said he feels comfortable calling it remission.”

Troy moves so fast to pull Abed close that Abed lets out a small _oof_. Troy tucks his head into the crook of Abed’s neck and holds him so tightly that he can probably feel Abed’s heartbeat picking up. Abed presses one hand between Troy’s shoulder blades and brings the other up to stroke through his hair.

Troy pulls back eventually, wipes at his eyes, and fixes Abed with possibly the most earnestly loving expression Abed has ever seen.

Abed doesn’t know how to handle it, but it’s making him feel a lot of vulnerable things at once, so he closes the gap and kisses Troy. He feels Troy cradle his face, and he thinks one or both of them might be crying when they pull away.

Moments later, Troy gasps.

“You wanted me to go back to _sleep?_ ”

Abed shrugs.

“We’ve got time again.”

\---

Abed has always been bendy. He’s never thought twice about it. As he’s grown older it’s been accompanied by more pops and creaks and aches, but he’s always figured that’s a part of being an adult. He runs fairly often, and picked up yoga in his freshman year at Greendale.

Well. He used to run. It’s less of an option now, reserved for the very best of weeks, when his joints and muscles are inflammation-free. Fibromyalgia, once triggered in the body, remains permanently, exacerbating the once-imperceptible effects of mild Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome; that is to say, Abed still has good days and bad days.

The bad days are less frequent, though, as time goes on. His body has accepted the transplant, finally, the worst of his other symptoms under control, and slowly he begins to find pieces of himself lying around.

A few months have passed, and it’s Christmastime. The study group has returned for the holidays, and the house is full and loud and busy and beautiful; Christmas morning finds Abed up earlier than the rest of them, but he doesn’t wake them up this year. He kisses Troy below the ear, slips out of bed, pads through the kitchen and steps into the backyard to roll out his yoga mat.

“Mind if I join you?”

Her voice is hushed with the early hour, scratchy from sleep. He smiles when he sees her.

“Good morning, Britta. Please do.”

He points her to a spare mat he has just inside the kitchen, and they work through a silent flow together. She doesn’t mention the pops and cracks as his bones settle more securely into place, nor the slow, heavy breath he releases as the muscles over one hip slide slowly across his pelvis and finally settle back where they should be. She follows his pace and she doesn’t stare, and that’s enough for him.

After Savasana, they face each other cross-legged on their mats.

“Namaste,” Britta over-enunciates, hands in prayer, and bows to him.

Abed has to stifle a laugh, because it’s such a Britta thing to do, but her company has been nice and he thinks the group is too hard on her anyway. He reaches out to squeeze her hand and smiles softly at her instead.

“Feeling better?” she asks, her smile reaching her eyes, and he’s instantly glad he didn’t make fun of her. She doesn’t deserve to feel so self-conscious all the time.

“Yeah. You?”

“Much.” She yawns a bit. “It’s good to see you, you know, doing stuff.”

“It’s good to _be_ doing stuff.”

He regards her for a moment. Britta has come a long way in the last few years. She’s a therapist now, and from what he hears she’s a good one; for all Jeff used to mock her, she works hard, and it’s paid off. She’s perceptive and intelligent - always has been, but now she’s learned to focus those skills - and he only wishes life had been easier on her. Wishes they had all been easier on her in the early days.

(If you ask Abed, Jeff never had grounds to make fun of her in the first place, given that she was at least pursuing a degree while he had literally been a _fake lawyer._ )

“Thank you for this,” he says.

“For what, sweating on your mat?”

“For not looking at me like I’m going to break into pieces.”

“You’re tougher than you look,” she says lightheartedly. “Took me a while to realize that, but we got there eventually.”

“I’m really proud of you, Britta,” he says, and for a moment her eyes shine in the dawn light. She blinks it away quickly.

“I’m really proud of you too.”

He scoots off of his mat and begins wiping it down, passing her a cloth for her own.

“How are you doing, dealing with everything that happened this year?”

She doesn’t ask it like it’s a delicate question, and she doesn’t ask it like a therapist. She’s his friend, first and foremost, and he’s grateful for her.

“Good days and bad days,” he says neutrally, focusing on rolling his mat up precisely.

When that’s done, he sits back on his heels, looks at her, and decides he doesn’t want to brush her off.

“There are lots of good days. But I get really overwhelmed sometimes, in new ways I’m not used to, and I don’t always know how to deal with it.”

“Well,” she sits back and gives him her full attention, “If you ever need it, I know a really good therapist.”

A moment of silence stretches between them.

Britta says “It’s not me--” at the same time as Abed asks “Are you talking about you, or--”

“No. Her name is Sophie, she lives in Pasadena. She specializes in trauma therapy.”

“Okay. I can do Pasadena.”

Britta stands and offers him a hand up, and he accepts. As soon as he’s standing he pulls her into a hug.

“You’re a good friend,” he murmurs. She kisses him on the cheek, and they head inside.

\---

It’s tradition to give Jeff Greendale t-shirts for Christmas now. Everyone finds it hilarious - Jeff even likes it, though he won’t admit it - and while he always donates the shirts on December 26th like a holy pilgrimage, he keeps one from every Christmas.

Surrounded by discarded wrapping paper and a small mountain of community college tees, the gang gets comfortable in their assorted chairs and couch stations as Troy puts on Abed’s gift from Ben Bennett, a Lego Batman DVD. Annie runs to the kitchen to grab the popcorn.

Halfway through, Abed’s mind is thoroughly changed about who the best Batman is. He turns his head to tell Troy, only to find him sound asleep, mouth open, sprawled bonelessly against Abed’s shoulder. Abed presses a soft kiss into his hair.

Annie is on his other side, and when he looks at her she’s smiling back at him, nearly crying. As carefully as she can without jostling Troy, she moves to lean on Abed’s other arm, taking his hand and holding it tightly in her lap.

Maybe it’s having his family here with him, or the magical atmosphere of Christmas, but some last little piece of Abed shifts back into place.

He’s asleep by the end credits.

**Author's Note:**

> medical sources: my life
> 
> find me on tumblr @nadir-barnes.


End file.
